Rob from Million Dollar Experiment Down Under has been chosen to be our second Blog about your Blog author interview. I have asked him a series of questions about some personal things, blogging and blog about your blog. I hope you enjoy the interview.

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Are you married? Girlfriend?

I am married, with 2 little kids, and live in Auckland, New Zealand

What do you do when you are not blogging?

I work full time in IT as a Database Analyst which keeps me busy… outside of work I enjoy running, the occasional game of squash and of course socializing with friends and family. The favourite sports I like watching are Rugby League and Rugby, these sports are however probably more popular in NZ and Australia than other parts of the world!

Both of our interviewers have been from out of the US!

What is your favorite blog to read besides your own?

I read a lot of blogs, my favourite at the moment is www.shoemoney.com , I do however take time to visit most of the blogs I link to that are a similar theme to my own.

I have read that too from time to time, very successful blogger!

Now the personal is out of the way, let me ask you a few questions about your blog

When was your blog created?

The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under began on the 14th October 2006, so its been going just over 3 months.

Seems to be about the same time we all started up our blogs.

Why did you choose your blog topic?

Being a Steve Pavlina fan for a while now I was impressed with his Million Dollar Experiment, so I thought why not give it a go and blog about the journey as I go along, which also helps to motivate me.

Did you think you were going to be instantly successful?

Not at all, I realize that it takes a lot of time to build valuable content on a blog site, as well as loyal readers.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?

There are two things that I enjoy the most, one is receiving and responding to comments from readers, this is great because no matter what your stats are saying it proves people are actually reading and interested in your posts. The other thing I get a buzz out of is reading other blogs that are pointing to a post on your site saying it is worth reading, or mentioning something you posted about that has helped them out in some way.

I love reading posts or reviews of Blog about your Blog! It makes it all worthwhile.

Where do you see your web site in one year?

In one years time I would like to have a readership in the hundreds and hopefully be well on the way to assisting my readers (along with myself) to increasing the wealth that they are making online!

Do you have any new upcoming projects or ideas you want to announce?

Myself and a colleague have just launched a new web site www.curryfocus.com – its about curries and curry restaurants all around the world!

I’ve only had curry once, and it wasn’t too bad! Interesting concept, I hope you get a post together on BAYB about it so we can read more!

What is the best feature on your blog?

I believe the best feature would be the 10 day summaries showing where the money is being made from in the experiment to date.

And the final series of questions, a little bit about Blog about your Blog

How did you find us?

I would have to say that you found me really, at the beginning you sent me an email asking if I would like to join up.

You were hand-picked lol

What do you like most about BAYB?

In a nutshell I guess the way that BAYB can be used to generate additional traffic to your site.

What new feature would you like to see?

I think as this site grows bigger one way to really crank it up would be to share the revenue of the site with the Authors of the content, obviously that is not an option whilst the site is in its infancy but in time it would be great to see.

Yes I would definitely love to do this. Of course we are starting small, I am getting an affiliate program together as well as free advertising to our BAYB authors. I would love to re-invest that not only in BAYB and further success of that, but also in the members who have been with us from the beginning and promoted us so much.

…For the hardest question of all…

What do you like the least?

Its looking much better since the centered text disappeared… lol, however although it is just a small thing I think the font size should be increased just a point or so. If you have a large screen resolution the font is quite tiny.

I found the evil source of the centered text and I defeated it. Next it is time to search where I can fix the font size. Thanks!

Who have you chosen to be the next one interviewed?

I choose Tom of the Soap Box Jury to be interviewed next.

Thank you for the interview, I appreciate your answers and timely response to it! Get ready Tom we are coming for you next. Remember if there was a question I missed that you want asked in the next interview please submit it by commenting on this post or emailing me at ff_n_stuff@yahoo.com

Imagine your life is falling apart and around you, so just to make yourself feel better, you sit down and write an angry letter to God, telling him exactly how you feel about how he has treated you. I think we can all imagine ourselves in that situation.

But what if, when the letter is finished, you find yourself sitting there with your pen still in your hand – writing a reply that seems to come from God? And what is more, a reply that seems to make sense!

That is what happened to Neale Donald Walsch – and his resulting dialog with God grew into the bestselling series of books called Conversations With God, a series of books which have changed the life of many people.

If you would like to find out more, check out the latest post at The Secret Of Life.

Simon
The Secret Of Life

Prompted by the post on commenting, I got to thinking about the other great tool for generating community buzz, the forum.

None of what I am about to say is my own work, as I have no original thought in my head about blog and website promotion. These pearls of forum (foral?) wisdom come from a podcast I recall by the great British web usability and accessibility guru, Paul Boag.

When you start a forum, make sure you have lots of regular visitors to your site already. Maybe 5% of your regulars have the time and inclination to frequent a forum and contribute. And of that 5% only 5% will become regular and reliable contributors.

When you set up a forum keep it very simple and limited in scope. ie Have literally 2 or 3 categories and no more.

Before you launch it, pre-prime as many friends and relations as possible and tell them to get their butts on your forum at x hour on y day and get writing intelligently. A tall order for some of our friends, but you get the idea.

That is a quick and easy way to get a buzz going within a confined space. And then, a bit like a house party, as it gets more rowdy, open up more rooms. Once a few sub categories suggest themselves, open them up and start to transfer posts across. That way there is always a sense of proactive community.

The Pisstakers get about 2 comments a week from around 500 unique visitors, so a forum is pushing it at this moment in time. However, we have a plan that when we hit 10000 uniques a month, we will have a forum ready and waiting to launch on the world. This time next year you are welcome to call by The Pisstakers and be funny.

I’ve encountered one or two blogs recently that I’ve noticed have turned off their comments. I don’t really get that? Why would you do such a thing? Leaving comments is such a large part of what makes a blog.

It’s the promise of web 2.0 – complete interaction. Don’t just passively read content like a lot of the lurkers here do. Interact with the medium. By all means have moderation in place. Don’t let someone hijack your blog and change the tone with swearing or stupid comments (I mean really stupid comments).

But it is important to the life of your blog to keep that connection with your readers. If I see a blog and I can’t comment on it I feel cheated. Like the transaction didn’t complete itself.

The other gripe I have about comments are when you will only allow blogger account holders or wordpress only members etc. This irritates me even further than if you have just turned them off (mmmm actually maybe I’m irritated equally).

There is a responsibility as good blogging community members:

• As readers to comment on a story or a post as if you were having a conversation with the writer even if it’s just to tell them that you agree. As a side point there is enough negativity in the world so if you’ve got nothing nice to say don’t say anything. I’m not saying you have to comment on every little thing you come across but i think if you are even slightly entertained by the piece maybe you should say something.
• As writers to allow comments and to respond to comments. I know people who might get 60 odd comments on a post and still respond to them all! It makes your reader feel noticed and important and it’s building that relationship. But reserve the right to delete objectional comments. And that’s something that you and the tone of your blog need to decide on.

Hopefully some people will feel moved enough to comment on this post purely because of it’s topic. I guess I’ll count myself lucky if I get three comments.

I will take a moment though to send out some kudos to one of the other authors here who even though she was really busy at the time, she posted a round up post mentioning what was going on in all the blogs that she frequents because it was important to her to let her blogging community know that she was still there and noticing us! Good on you Lucky!

Actually whilst i have the bag of kudos out I’ll throw some Matts way. He really busts himself keeping this place running and making sure people are getting their blogs noticed and I don’t know if everyone who visits here realizes how much work he puts in! So good on you too Matt!!

“My Blog-Fu is strong”

Those of you who know me already know that I’m in the midst of moving out of our house (in under 12 days) thanks to the lease not being renewed. What better time to launch a new blog project!!

Unfortunately it’s just a little poor timing but I couldn’t sit on it any longer I had to get it out into the blogosphere!

Pop Culture Heroines

The blog is a multiple author blog that will feature essays and articles discussing female characters in popular culture. Often these characters are dismissed as not having substance or sex objects without looking at their cultural significance or depth.

We are accepting submissions – I’ve already managed to line up some great writers but we’re always looking for more of course!!!

Another interesting fact that may be of interest especially around here is that I do not intend on submitting this to any blog exchanges. I don’t have the time to surf those things so I’m going to take the time that I would have normally spent surfing on those blogsurf bars into spreading the word and getting top notch content on there!

I’ll keep everyone posted on how we do without the exchanges!

On every page of The Pisstakers we have a single advert space in a prominent position above the fold. With each new page refresh, a new image appears. It currently displays our site designer’s logo Bonsai Studio and some filler graphics.

As part of a traffic building plan, we are now offering a spot on the loop to bloggers who have had their sites reviewed on The Pisstakers.

Visitors who click on your logo will be taken to your review, and from there they can visit your blog, if they so wish. It is a free offer that will run from now until the end of March, at which point we will review what is going on.

On current traffic, you will be seen on at least 1000 pages a month. We just ask you to write a quickie post on your site about The Pisstakers and submit it to the same social bookmark sites that appear at the bottom of our blog posts. If you are interested Contact Ed with a URL to your logo and a link to your post on the Pisstakers. There are 10 spots only, so don’t be backward in coming forward.

Thanks

The blogging world is changing, google adsense and affiliate programs aren’t cutting for the average blogger.

The age of “sponsored posts” is upon us. Bloggers everywhere seem to be using this for extra income on their blogs. A few sponsored posts and you can buy a domain and webhosting. To meet the demands, many new services and websites are becoming available.

Why is it so popular?

There are many upsides when participating in paid per post advertising. The biggest may simply be that it’s guaranteed money. You don’t need to sell anything or really promote it at all. You get a topic to write about, and you get paid. That simple. The payouts are usually a flat and fair rate. The posts are also usually quick and easy to write. I could probably write several posts in an hour if I had the offers.

Why are advertisers investing in paid per post ads?

It builds a lot of links to their websites. In turn, that makes these websites get higher search engine rankings. By adding keywords in the paid per post ads, they also build that keyword to hit on their website. When I begin to further advertise Blog about your Blog paid per post advertising is definitely something we will strongly consider.

Is sponsored posting right for you?

It may be, especially if you want to earn some extra money and your blog doesn’t get huge amounts of traffic. I would imagine a blogger would need to do fewer and fewer paid posts as traffic increases. For those big-time bloggers your price per post will go up meaning less posts.

Where can I find these websites?

There are several popular websites that offer to pay you for posting about a certain product or website.
I have found blogitive to be the best for this. They payout weekly and have a decent amount of offers, you just have to actively check their website to find it.

PayPerPost is apparently the most popular, but I have yet to be accepted there, so I can’t offer much insight about it. I do know they have started to limit how many offers you can accept per day, but that gives everyone opportunity to post.

Blogsvertise send you offers via email, which you get to accept or reject. They hand pick who gets the offers, so you may get a lot, then none at all.
Lastly, LoudLaunch is brand new and I have yet to try them out. I’ve seen offers from 3-5$ here, and they seemed reasonable.

Any questions or comments on this I would love to hear them. Do you use sponsored posts? If you haven’t before has this article changed your mind?